JWH-018 Nightmare

disclaimer: I'm going to be posting this report on a few forums and submitting to erowid/lycaeum as well. I didn't see any trip reports describing this severe a reaction before so I really want to just make sure the info is out there. Please be safe guys!

So I got the order of JWH-018, a synthetic cannabinoid, in a few days ago, and I was eager to try it. I have my milligram scale, I've read reports on dosage, etc, I should be prepared right?

So, the first time I tried this, I took 1mg, wanted to see if I had an extreme reaction at low doses. Didn't feel a thing, at all. Felt like the chem was safe to try at higher doses.

So, a few days later, I measure out 5mg on my scale, put the tiny bit of powder in a capsule, and down the hatch; followed by what was an uneventful hour, during which I felt like, "this is it huh? can't feel anything." I would eat these words later in the hospital.

I apologize but I will not be able to give standard timestamps for what was happening, time was nearly impossible to tell.

At about the 1 hour mark, I began to feel disoriented. Not "high" disoriented, but legitimately like I was having some sort of cognitive issue. My skin felt burning hot, and I noticed that my heart was beating very fast (I used the stopwatch on my phone and it was around 160-170 bpm. Not life threatening, but way higher than my usual 60 bpm. But underlying all of this, and most profound, was an absolute cold fear that I was going to die. An irrational, couldn't talk myself out of it fear that I simultaneously knew was probably unnecessary, yet which I couldn't stop. Terror. Absolute panic.

I don't know when, but at one point I put the bag of the chem in my pocket and texted my roommate that I needed to be taken to the hospital. I then called him and told him I needed to go, couldn't tell him why, and that I wasn't kidding. How I was able to function enough to do this I don't know.

I tried talking to him on the way there to explain the situation, my internal monologue was fine, but I couldn't form sentences or thoughts when I tried to speak. I know that some people find these effects desireable, but I've seen people on pot, they can speak, even if they sound stupid. I knew that words were barely coming out of my mouth, and I was losing motor function, severely. At this point, too, my drymouth went from inconvenient to painful.

The negative effects peaked as I got into the ER. I felt as though I was near total loss of motor control. My muscles felt as though they were moving of their own accord, like an infant. My limbs would shake violently, the muscles in my legs would clench to the point of pain, and I could only stop it by focusing all my attention on the offending limb. You'd have thought I had parkinson's or cerebral paulsy just by looking at me.

Throughout all of this, I had one underlying fear: what if this is permanent? I've done a lot of other drugs, some only once, some with a degree of regularity, but all of them plants/medicines with a well documented history of use and effects, well understood dosing. This stuff is essentially uncharted territory, there was no reason to assume that the effects would fade or not.

Luckily for me they did. After I actually went into the ER and was hooked up to a monitor, my friend said I looked like I had a bit more control, and a while after he said so, I felt so as well. I was forming sentences better and the extreme muscle spasm was subsiding.

After explaining the situation to the doctor and giving him the chem to look at, and listening to him ask me why I didn't just smoke pot, and essentially (rightfully) call me a moron, he explained that I just needed to be monitored for a while. It was about then that an extreme lethargy/sleepiness fell over me. To be honest, I think this was the intended effect of the drug, an extreme relaxation, but it was hard to tell because I didn't get there from a baseline, but from the cliff. I was eventually discharged, went home, and slept it off.

Today, the morning after, I do still feel a real cloudiness in my head, like I've taken allergy medicine, which will pass I'm sure.

So where did I go wrong? I took what I felt was a long time (about a month) getting information about the research chemicals I was interested in. I also spent the same amount of time verifying vendors and their products. At this point, I'm still relatively certain that I received the product I paid for, with no adulterants. The issue was dosage and my personal chemistry.

If I had two braincells to rub together, I would have spaced the dosage instead of taking it all at once. I have gone through this drawn out dosage procedure with everything else I've ever tried, so why I was reckless last night I don't know. I wasn't feeling angsty or particularly depressed, it was just a momentary lack of judgement. I think part of the reason is that, since childhood, I have had it hammered into my head that opiates (my occasional DoC) are dangerous and that you can both become addicted to or overdose on them. I've never had an issue with opis. I didn't have that healthy fear/respect for this chemical, so my anxiousness to try something new wasn't checked by anything. Had this been an opiate, I would have taken 1mg and waited 45 minutes to an hour, then another 1mg and waited, etc. I may have still had an unpleasant experience, but not like it was. I'm convinced that that crazy effects I had were the result of an overdose (which, unlike with THC, is possible with synthetic cannabinoids).

Either way, the doctor took the chemical, (the bag had the full name on it and he wanted to look it up), and I didn't want/expect it returned. I will be tossing the other RC's as well, I'm not at all ready to go that route again.

Just as an afterthought, if not for the legal aspects, I'd rather have ODed on an opiate or some known, common drug. At least then I would have known that 1) this happens and doctors know how to deal with it and 2) these effects will not be permanent. The doctors baffled looks and my ignorance of the chemical contributed to my fears at the moment.

 

That sounds really odd, I've never heard of this.

Is your scale accurate? I believe that one of the popular mg scales can be around 10mg off when measuring under 10mg. So basically, are you sure you took 5mg?

 

did the hospital give you anything to calm you down, or did they just monitor you?

 

Well, it's difficult to eyeball 5mg of anything, but I'd say it's accurate. I checked the calibration with a 10g weight and it was dead on. I've checked that weight against another scale, which I know to be accurate, so I think that was good. I mean, if the scale is somehow inaccurate under a certain weight, I don't know.

 

By the time I was in the bed, monitored, and speaking to the doctor, I had noticeably improved. He said he didn't want to give me anything else in case of interaction, unless it was necessary. I think he really had no idea what I was talking about with a "synthetic cannibanoid."

At that point, just the fact that I could notice my own improvement was a relief you can't imagine. I had a real fear that I had turned myself into a paulsied retard.

 

when you quintupled your dose perhaps??

 

That experience sounds strange indeed. I also received JWH-018, but I didn't take it orally, I smoked it off aluminum foil. I would probably recommend to anyone wanting to try JWH-018 to smoke it as the preferred route of administration. However, we also have to keep in mind that this is a research chemical with short/long term effects unknown. It is entirely possible that a certain segment of the population could have a bad reaction. Even fatal, sorry to say.

 

It was rhetorical. I know exactly what I did wrong.

 

Your retarded. Its people like you that will kill the RC scene.

 

Really?

 

isn't it so funny how someone claims another person is retarded yet uses incorrect grammer? I hate how people use "your" instead of you're.

 

In his defense, improper grammar and purposfully ingesting (what is in hindsight) a large quantity of a research chemical are worlds apart in terms of stupidity. :ack2:

In my defense, I think the secret is still safe even after my adventure last night. No cops, newsmen, or next of kin were involved. There was nothing actually illegal involved, so the doctor can't discuss the incident with anyone without violating HIPAA.

I'm not posting this report as a "beware! Stop using RCs! The sky is falling!" sort of thing. I just think that the least I can do is contribute to the communities knowledge about what this relatively unknown chemical might be capable of. I do not know if my reaction was unique, or if anyone who ingests enough will have the same thing, but the info is now out there and searchable. Hopefully it helps someone. Just a research

To pr0ne, believe me, it's not people like me who will damage the RC scene. It's not the guy who spends the money on an mg scale, gets the tools and extra capsules to measure and dose, has pretty decent drug experience. It's not the guy who spends weeks discussing the dosages and potential risks involved. And it's not the guy who take full responsibility for his own stupid decision and is still not giving up the name of the source after the experience went horribly. No, that guy won't hurt the scene.

The scene will be hurt when some stoner hears that this chem will "get him totally fucked up" and just eats or smokes it haphazardly, then sues/rats everyone out when things don't go right.

The scene will be hurt when some teenager gets his hands on an RC and kills himself, and his parents go on a suing spree because "their little brett" couldn't have had any other problems.

 

I thought 5 mg was an average JWH-018 dose. Do you really think you were in physical danger, or you just had a freak out?

 

From all the info I could get, 5mg seemed like a reasonable oral dose. Something occurred to me after I wrote the report that I never took into account: I'm not a regular pot smoker. Most of the dosages were by people who use a lot of pot and were looking for an alternative, so there system's tolerance to these types of chemicals should cont for something. Sort of like the cross tolerance an opiate user would have with kratom. That's a pretty glaring mistake on my part.

As far as real physical danger, I'm not sure. I can still sort of feel it; I suspect it will be a week or two until I'm back to baseline. Since I came out of it as the drug wore off, I think I wasn't in real physical danger at that dose.

There was definitely some freak out there, possibly induced by the drugs. However, the main part of the fear was that I had no real thought thread to hold onto of "this is normal, this has happened to other people, this will pass" because I had no idea that it would. I once ate what ended up being an extraordinarily high dose of LSA, which resulted in a much more painful experience than last night, but I didn't have the fear that I could have permanently caused brain damage or something with the stuff. I knew I could wait it out, and just calmly laid in my bed till the situation was over. With this, I just had no idea what I had done to myself.

 

Seriously man, going to the hospital is a waste. Do research, and dont do a dose that hasnt already been done.

 

Have you read a word that I have said?

Is that what you're pissed about? That I went to a hospital when I was experiencing what felt like at the time near meltdown of my cerebellum? Give me a fucking break.

I don't owe you the potential for permanent brain damage because you want to keep a secret, neither does anyone in the RCs using community owe anyone else. I went to the ER because I felt like it was necessary, and I told the truth because that's how you get the right treatment. If you took too much 2C-x, I would expect you to do the same.

This wasn't just a bad trip or a rookie freak-out. This was absolute, guinea-pig, uncharted territory. It all is. Anyone ingesting white powder from a bag shipped in overseas marked "not for human consumption" takes that risk.

 

Just jotted down a few extra symptoms that I didn't recall at the writing of the initial report:

Near complete loss of short term memory combined with extreme time dilation. Had originally planned on watching xxxHolic while stoned, and as the stuff kicked in I was watching an episode. I would get what felt like a half our into the show (it's only 24 minutes long) and feel like "how is this episode still on?" Only to see that, not only had only a few minutes passed, but I couldn't remember a single thing that I had watched.

I had some stereotypical "forgot to breath" moments where I felt as though I wasn't breathing and had to will myself to take a breath.

I would get up to do something, (like load erowid to check doses, or pour some water) only to find that I had already done them. I don't know how many times or for how long this happened, but those examples are what I can recall. This strikes me as the kind of frank delerium that is usually ascribed to the tropane class of drugs.

 

Personally, I've tried 8-10 mg oral doses several times (weighed on a mg scale), and have not had any severe reactions, just a feeling similar to taking pot orally. The only difference in my case was that I had been smoking it with pot for a while before I tried orally, so I might have had tolerance built up by then. I agree with you that it is most likely your body's chemistry...

 

honestly man, it sounds like you were really, really stoned.

 

Thats craazzzy man. Now i'm thinkin twice on ordering it. Proly nothing to worry about for most. I think I still like my odds.